
Class IlS 1.1. 
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AFTER THE WAR 



ADVERTISEMENT 

These reflections are the outcome 
of many discussions, during the 
past two years, with Men at the 
Front and the Back. 

I have ventured to address Mr. 
Robert Smillie, because, so far as 
I am able to judge, he represents 
and leads the most advanced sec- 
tions of the Labour Party. 



AFTER THE WAR 



BY VISCOUNT ESHER 

G.C.B., G.C.V.O. 



LONDON 
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 

1918 



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All Rights Rbsekvbd 






PREFACE 

Addressed to Mr. Robert Smillie 

I have not the honour to know you, but 
here in Scotland they say you are an honest 
and good man. 

History teems with examples of the 
political affinities of good men and evil 
actions. 

But your aims I assume to be pure. You 
desire the victory of your country's arms 
in this righteous war. You desire hereafter 
to mould judgment and inspire purpose, so 
as to secure the happiness and well-being 
of your countrymen. You have enjoyed the 
experience of intelligent participation in im- 
proving the lot of your fellow- workers. You 
see before you, stretching into immeasurable 
space, a new prospect for those upon whom 
the labour of the world has fallen heavily. 
Your sense of duty impels you to take a lead 
2 ix 



x PREFACE 

in bringing into relation your considered 
opinion and the law of the land. You desire 
to adapt political forms to the necessities of 
the people, as you conceive them. You 
wish, perhaps in arbitrary fashion, to supply 
the driving force that is required to bring 
about political and social change, that you 
believe to be beneficent. 

I have endeavoured, in the following pages, 
to put into the simplest language and to 
compress into the smallest compass some 
reflections upon political mechanics as I 
understand them. Speculation upon such 
matters is not immaterial, for you and your 
fellows will have to express in statutory form 
your mind and purpose. 

I ask you then to urge your followers to 
reason and explore. 

A friend of mine, of over twenty-five years' 
standing — a follower of yours — a man who 
has worked with his hands all his life, when 
we recently discussed these subjects, listened 
to my plea for old historic influences, and, 
pointing to an ancient tabard hanging on the 
wall of the room where we sat, said, " We 
«hall care for them as you care for that, as 



PREFACE xi 

a thing of beauty, but obsolete." These 
were fluid words. They contain no moral 
thought, for nothing that is old, historic, 
and beautiful can be obsolete in this sym- 
bolistic world. 

" There is a sanctity in a good man's home 
" which cannot be renewed in every tenement 
"that rises on its ruins : and I believe that 
"good men would generally feel this; and 
"that having spent their lives happily and 
" honourably, they would be grieved at the 
" close of them to think that the place of their 
" earthly abode which had seen, and seemed 
"almost to sympathise in, all their honour, 
"their gladness, or their suffering — that this 
"with all the record it bare of them, and all 
" of material things that they had loved and 
"ruled over, and set the stamp of themselves 
"upon — was to be swept away, as soon as 
" there was room made for them in the grave ; 
"that no respect was to be shown to it, no 
"affection felt for it, no good to be drawn 
" from it by their children ; that though there 
" was a monument in the church, there was no 
" warm monument in the hearth and house 
" to them ; that all that they ever treasured 
"was despised, and the places that had 



xii PREFACE 

" sheltered and comforted them were dragged 
"down to the dust. I say that a good man 
" would fear this ; and that, far more, a good 
" son, a noble descendant, would fear doing 
" it in his father's house." 

If we apply these words to the country of 
Shakespeare and Scott, they lend force to a 
patriotism that is noble, unaggressive, and 
reverent. They have nothing in common 
with the vulgar aspiration miscalled Im- 
perialism. They are consistent with broad 
humanitarian sympathy, with yearning 
towards universal brotherhood, and with 
the collective effort of men and women of 
the same race and language. 

You can interlace present hope with past 
endeavour, and intertwine the literature, 
art, and ancient institutions of our country 
with drastic changes in her laws. You can 
merge racial and historic pride in an inter- 
national combine for the World's Peace. 
You can define Progress as the gradual 
increasing happiness of the masses, and pur- 
sue the aim without dishonouring your fore- 
fathers. There is plenty of width in the 



PREFACE xiii 

world for the individualistic play of mind 
that loves tradition, that honours memory, 
that reverences imagination, and the collec- 
tive initiative and enterprise that mean 
higher standards of comfort and well-being. 
To insist upon necessary and inevitable con- 
flict between them is to render disservice 
to our country. 

Your opinions, as I understand them, and 
mine are not in agreement. I do not share 
your faith in democracy as a form of govern- 
ment. But we agree in love of our country 
and fidelity to the men of our race. For 
their sake, use your influence to bid your 
friends and associates pause at the threshold 
of these undetermined issues, and to make 
sure before sweeping away any institution 
deeply rooted in historic soil that it is in 
truth an obstacle. 



CONTENTS 



THE CROWN 


CHAPTER 


I 

• • 


P1.GB 
1 




CHAPTER 


II 




THE CHURCH 


• • 


• • 


. 21 




CHAPTER 


III 




THE CABINET 


• • 


• • 


. 35 




CHAPTER 


IV 




PARLIAMENT 


• • 


• • 


. 49 



CHAPTER V 

THE WAR AIM . . . . .61 



xiv 



AFTER THE WAR 



CHAPTER I 

THE CROWN 

The temper of Englishmen being neither 
subversive nor logical, it is a curious fatality 
that has allied England to a nation that is 
both. The French are the most logical of 
peoples and the fondest of revolution. We, 
on the other hand, make our sparse revolu- 
tions according to law and with the utmost 
regard to tradition. The result has in- 
variably been a masterpiece of inconsequence. 
The Great Rebellion, prompted by revolt 
against autocracy, placed the United King- 
dom under the heel of the greatest of auto- 
crats. The Revolution of 1688, originating 
in the unpopularity of a Stuart king, left 
England a pawn in the hands of a detested 

Dutchman. 

1 



2 THE CROWN 

The Reform Bill of 1832 was a monument 
of illogical compromise with a " middle 
class" struggling to obtain a share of the 
political spoils. Peel and Lord John Russell 
fought for years over the bauble of political 
power, while their partisans disputed as 
though great " principles " were at stake. 
The influence of the monarchy, fallen into 
grave disrepute under the later Hanoverian 
kings, was re-established during the long 
reign of Queen Victoria, in spite of the 
republican propaganda of philosophers and 
theorists. 

That grave and experienced statesmen 
should send their decisions in red boxes to 
the hereditary representative of a certain 
family for criticism and approval was not 
considered incongruous ; and that every 
appointment, naval, military, or civil, should 
be " submitted " to this strange authority, 
and defended by elaborate explanations, was 
not thought anachronistic. The Constitu- 
tion, though frequently modified, was as- 
sumed to be a permanent and unchange- 
able organism. While democracy was on 
all men's lips, the love of oligarchy was in 



QUEEN VICTORIA 3 

their hearts. The revolutionary families 
were mocked at by Lord Beaconsfield, but 
exploited by Mr. Gladstone. Their power 
was unshaken in spite of the ten-pound 
householder, and their authority was un- 
impeded by the middle-class magnates who 
crowded the scarlet benches of the House of 
Lords. 

When a girl-sovereign refused to accept 
a powerful Tory leader as her minister, 
except upon her own terms, she obtained the 
support of the English people for her pre- 
tension. When her youthful husband toned 
down foreign despatches that had received 
the approval of cabinets, both powerful 
ministers and ebullient parliaments yielded 
with good grace. Never was the influence 
of hereditary kingship more powerful in 
England than during the reign of Victoria. 
Publicists vied with each other in glorifying 
the hidden power of the Crown. As an anti- 
dote to political jobbery, as the fly-wheel of 
the Constitution, as a check upon the hasty 
judgment of harassed statesmanship, the 
Crown was cherished by men of all classes 
and in every stage of political education. 
3 



4 THE CROWN 

The voice of criticism was rarely heard 
and speedily extinguished. A ministerial 
portfolio was grudgingly assigned to a cavil- 
ling politician after pledges had been given 
for good behaviour. To another, in spite of 
influential backing, it was definitely refused. 
With unerring instinct the monarch imposed 
checks and held the balance even. An 
amused and applauding nation supported 
the Crown against a routed minister, and a 
baffled parliamentary majority. Instinc- 
tively Queen Victoria turned to those middle 
classes where political power resided. Their 
virtues she shared, and their foibles she con- 
doned. Their moral standards were hers, 
and with their simple religious beliefs she 
profoundly sympathized. No head of the 
State, however selected, could have supplied 
the nation with a figure in more perfect 
accord with their prejudices. 

When the Queen celebrated the sixtieth 
year of her reign, the British Empire gathered 
round her with ecstatic splendour. When, 
a few years later, death came, the great in- 
articulate masses of her subjects, of all 
races and colours, spread over the face of 



KING EDWARD VII 5 

the earth, mourned for her with genuine 
sorrow. 

Such was the monarchical revival in Eng- 
land during the nineteenth century. It is 
difficult to imagine any system of popular 
election that would have provided the nation 
with a great functionary of this type. 

King Edward, though cast in a different 
mould, inherited many of his mother's gifts. 
They were, however, modified or strength- 
ened by the masculinity which was his chief 
characteristic and most potent charm. Since 
the days of the Tudors Englishmen had not 
possessed so manly a monarch. Yet his 
instinct for the worth of a man was as keen 
as any woman's. His tact, a sense of fit- 
ness on all occasions and in every presence, 
amounted to genius. He had no illusions 
himself, but he destroyed none in others. 
His heart, generous and expansive, was in 
thrall to reason. . Long experience of flattery 
had given him its measure. He could dis- 
play anger, but resentment never. Forgive- 
ness of personal injury was no effort to him. 
A breach of public duty was rarely condoned. 
Orderliness was, perhaps, the keynote of his 



6 THE CROWN 

nature. In affairs great and small he loved 
order that was rigid but never pedantic. 

King Edward's masterly shrewdness per- 
ceived the difference between the England 
his mother had ruled and the people over 
whom he was summoned to preside. The 
Education Acts had done their work. A 
generation trained under totally different 
conditions, literate, and provided with cheap 
newspapers, a people pliant before the 
rhetorical devices of men sprung from them- 
selves, had taken the place of the opulent 
middle class on whose support Queen Vic- 
toria had relied. The King, with a wide 
and humorous gesture, gathered the common 
people in his wake. They followed him 
with laughing complacency, and they were 
prepared to follow him anywhere, proud of 
his manhood and confident in his good sense. 
With characteristic penetration, they divined 
his regard for ordered society and his love 
of fair play. It was all they asked of him. 

The King's knowledge of men taught him 
their relative values. His preferences did 
not blind him, and his scepticism was so 
sweet-blooded that he was incapable of 



KING EDWARD VII 7 

exaggerating human weakness. He is said 
to have cared for display, but he was gor- 
geous himself, and appreciated that unre- 
strained beauty which is so characteristic 
of England and her children. If he liked 
pageants, it was as he liked the Derby, for 
its wide expression of a people's holiday. 
In solemn moments no one surpassed the 
King in gravity of soul or outward decorum. 
When called to the throne, he had lived 
every moment of his own fifty years of life. 
He had gathered knowledge from men on 
the highway of the world. Experience had 
rilled his thoughts with reflections beyond all 
book learning. If the restraining influence 
of the Crown upon indiscreet or ill-considered 
action is its primary function, no one was 
better equipped by upbringing and by 
natural gifts to exercise it than King Edward. 
No elective machinery could have supplied 
the nation with a leader who so captivated 
its fancy; and if the throne had been sub- 
mitted to the test of a popular election, 
among all Englishmen then alive or alive 
to-day no one would have had a chance with 
the King. 



8 THE CROWN 

During the past eight eventful years the 
traditions of the monarchy have remained 
unchanged, and are sustained with a quiet 
dignity that is universally acknowledged, 
and with a sympathetic regard for the 
loftiest interests of the Empire that is appre- 
ciated to its farthest confines. 

The Bureaucratic Government of the 
United Kingdom since the outbreak of the 
war resembles the Parliamentary Govern- 
ment as carried on by Queen Victoria and 
Mr. Gladstone in 1870 as little as the Govern- 
ment of those days resembled that of Crom- 
well. Dimly, perhaps, but surely, the men 
fighting in France realize the change that has 
come over their country. During the long 
periods of waiting, between yesterday's 
escape and the battle to-morrow, men 
examine, argue, and discuss. Few customs, 
habits, and institutions pass unchallenged. 
Religious beliefs, political compromises, 
monarchy, the Church, heredity, eugenics, 
marriage, concubinage, the great shibboleth 
democracy, are torn, rarely with passion, 
always with daring frankness, to tatters. 
The whole order of society is under a micro- 



MOMENTOUS CHANGES 9 

scope, scanned by a million eyes, to the 
accompaniment of the tremendous music of 
the guns. War has loosed new and volcanic 
forces. It has swept away the process — 
slow, broadening from precedent to prece- 
dent — that our fathers found so dignified and 
becoming. "Cabinet " government, with 
its unrecorded mysteries, is no more. Old 
names survive, but they have lost their 
meaning. An avalanche of women has been 
hurled into the political chaos. Institutions 
as well as ideas will have to be re-sorted. 
That discussion and heart-searching should 
occupy those long dreary interludes while 
men are waiting for death in the trenches is 
not surprising. 

So long as the human heart is strong and 
the human reason weak royalty will be 
preferred to a republic, was the verdict of a 
writer whose best-known work glorified the 
Constitution of our country as he knew it 
fifty years since. To-day his aphorism will 
not stand the test of examination, for we 
can reason about the monarchy and defend 
it by argument. 

It is not strictly true that kingship appeals 






10 THE CROWN 

to sentiment rather than to reason. Tra- 
dition counts for much, and so does sym- 
bolism. There is undoubtedly the mystery 
that hedges a king. A president may have 
been a next-door neighbour, and may be 
so again ; but the descendant of King 
Alfred possesses points in the eyes of men 
of all classes who think of themselves as 
Anglo-Saxons. But there are also prac- 
tical, workaday reasons that give a king 
preference over an elected head of a state. 
A concrete monarch appeals more readily to 
plain minds that an indefinite republicanism. 
That a sovereign state should possess a 
head or chief is here taken for granted. The 
point is not in dispute up to now, although 
it may be raised hereafter, should the 
sovereignty of states become merged in 
cosmopolitan federations. 

Looking to the recent experiences of 
Britain, we can perceive many advantages 
in the character, habits, and atmosphere of 
the English Court that republics lack. An 
English monarch, in possessing a family 
right to pre-eminence, can afford to estab- 
lish a standard of morals and manners that 



COURTS AND REPUBLICS 11 

an elected president finds difficult to impose. 
A king's authority in such matters is un- 
questioned. By inherited tradition, by up- 
bringing, by surroundings, his judgment is 
assumed to be superior and his decisions are 
undisputed. When he speaks ex cathedra 
upon matters of social order, his word is 
final. He can afford to impose restraints, 
and frame rules of conduct, that men and 
women are ready to obey, because they 
believe the sovereign to be above social 
pressure and to be free from partisan pre- 
judice. The King belongs to no party 
and to no class. He is nominally the head 
of an Episcopal Church, but he is the head 
of a Presbyterian Church as well. He is 
bred in a special atmosphere, safeguarded 
from the jealousy and envy, the triumphs 
and failures, the petty temptations and even 
the ordinary pleasures of the mass of the 
people he rules. This aloofness is believed 
to guarantee freedom from obsession in 
social questions, and in point of fact it 
does so. 

Social gradation and social prejudice 
ramify deep down into our social fabric, 
4 



12 THE CROWN 

and an Arbiter Elegantiarum is as necessary 
to the English people as a conductor to an 
orchestra. Men and women will yield their 
j udgment before the dictum of a royal prince 
who would flout an elected representative. 
In the governance of mankind nothing is 
small or great. Everything matters. A war, 
changing the face of Europe, has been 
brought about by incivility to a public func- 
tionary, and a revolution has been precipi- 
tated by a song. 

Probing deeper, other and graver merits 
are to be found attached to kingship. A 
monarch's education and training are speci- 
ally directed towards the functions he 
has to fulfil. Royalty is not only a caste, 
but a profession. An ordinary citizen, with 
a unanimous popular vote behind him, is no 
better equipped to be the constitutional 
head of a state than a plain man is equipped 
to argue a complicated case before the High 
Court of Appeal. He can doubtless make a 
more or less lame appearance. 

The President of the United States is not 
a " constitutional " sovereign in the Euro- 
pean sense. He is a special functionary, 



THE PRESIDENT OF U.S. 13 

endowed with authority and powers wholly 
dissimilar from those enjoyed by any head 
of any state in the world to-day. His 
duties, if they are well performed, require 
aptitudes and gifts of a special order, and 
have to be sought for by a rude enough 
method among the citizens of the United 
States. If the King of England were asked 
to exercise the powers entrusted to the 
President of the American Constitution, it 
is improbable that the monarchy would 
remain the appanage of a particular family. 
The American President belongs to a party 
or group, and he cannot dispossess himself 
of this qualification or drawback. An Eng- 
lish monarch's freedom from party ties, his 
independence of party bias, his hereditary 
isolation, his domestic seclusion, are guaran- 
tees, in the eyes of the people, that he will 
perform impartially the duties assigned to 
him by the law of the land. That the King 
can do no wrong is not only a convenient 
constitutional maxim; it is the honest 
opinion of the mass of the people. They 
would as soon believe the Archbishop of 
Canterbury capable of cheating at cards. 



14 THE CROWN 

The instinct of the people is perfectly 
rational and sound. However an arch- 
bishop might be tempted, so long as he 
occupied Lambeth Palace he would not carry 
the ace of trumps up his lawn sleeve. So 
long as a king of England is the head of a 
royal family, so long as he occupies the 
throne by virtue of his hereditary right 
under the Act of Settlement, he will do no 
wrong in the sense in which the word is 
understood by the people over whom he 
reigns. 

If the sovereign had been educated and 
trained in Bloomsbury, if he were elected to 
preside over Mr. Lloyd George for four or 
five years and then returned to his Blooms- 
bury home, the safeguards would not possess 
the same potency, and if they did the masses 
of the people would not feel the same confi- 
dence or security. 

The training of a prince implies familiarity 
with men and affairs beyond the reach of 
ordinary persons, and of this advantage the 
nation reaps full benefit. From childhood 
royal princes are in the habit of meeting 
men and women of every class and station. 



THE TRAINING OF A PRINCE 15 

They can move freely in any society. A 
Prince of Wales does not require to be intro- 
duced. At home and abroad the heir to the 
throne can and does become personally 
acquainted with the men who govern. They 
meet without restraint on either side. Every 
statesman in Europe was personally known 
to King Edward. He could tell his ministers 
all about the men with whom they were in 
correspondence and whom they had never 
seen. This was an asset in the conduct of 
difficult negotiations of incalculable value. 

When King Edward sat smoking a cigar 
with Gambetta in a Paris restaurant, he was 
aware that no " president " could have 
ventured so far. And until Gambetta 
passed from the stage, serious difficulties 
between Great Britain and France melted 
away. Whether in the society of foreign 
potentates or ministers of state, whether 
gossiping with trainers and jockeys at New- 
market or Chantilly, whether chatting with 
lord mayors or mayors in the provinces, 
whether sitting in a miner's cottage or a 
Highland bothie, an English king is always 
at his ease: a "president" never. The 



16 THE CROWN 

one has nothing to lose and the other so 
much. Every elected head of the State fears 
to compromise himself or his friends. The 
King cannot be compromised. The King is 
free and independent. His place is assured. 
He owes it to no man. No man or group 
of men has a hold over him. So when as 
head of the State he is called upon to 
"approve" of individual claims to place, 
power, or rewards, his judgment is free from 
bias, and his questions and criticisms receive 
an attentive hearing from the designating 
political authority. 

Every promotion to the higher ranks of 
the public service, naval, military, and civil, 
was submitted to Queen Victoria, and reasons 
had to be given and questions answered. 
Every list of " Honours " was carefully 
scrutinized by the Queen herself. Her pub- 
lished correspondence shows the care that 
she bestowed upon these matters. No 
" president " would be given credit for that 
impartiality which was universally accorded 
to the Queen. In higher matters of State 
a king possesses experience, records, and 
traditions that no president can claim. 



ROYAL ARCHIVES AT WINDSOR 17 

The Royal Archives at Windsor are a mine 
of wealth in a country like ours, where 
precedent is honoured as a counterpoise to 
ill-considered action and jobbery. The 
accumulation of such archives depends upon 
family custodianship, No " president " 
chosen from a party group could afford to 
leave traces of his rule to his successor. 
The custom of British sovereigns since the 
accession of George III has been to avoid 
as far as possible verbal explanations of 
policy from ministers. Writing to the 
sovereign must often have been tedious to 
Peel or Gladstone, but they never shrank 
from a process that possessed the double 
advantage of clarifying their own minds 
and of placing on record, with secrecy 
upon which they could rely, their reasoned 
opinions. 

No one familiar with the inner history of 
Queen Victoria's reign can dispute the value 
to the State of the intimate communion 
between sovereign and minister. The letters 
of her ministers to the Queen would never 
have been written to a president, who would 
have carried them away in a carpet-bag. 



18 THE CROWN 

Not only would English literature have been 
the poorer, but the policy of the country 
during those eventful years might have been 
less restrained. Influence as distinct from 
authority is the peculiar appanage of a royal 
prince. Substitute a president for a monarch 
and influence dwindles, while if authority is 
not enhanced at the expense of ministerial 
responsibility, where is the gain ? 

Mr. Gladstone laid stress upon the " aggre- 
gate of direct influence normally exercised 
by the sovereign upon the counsels and pro- 
ceedings of ministers," and the veil lifted 
when Queen Victoria's correspondence was 
published substantiated his assertion. 

The entry of America into the European 
orbit, and the clearer recognition by English- 
men of the powers granted to a president of 
the United States by the American Consti- 
tution, may lead to examination and contrast 
of the two systems of government. It may 
presently be desired by Great Britain and 
the Dominions and a democratized India 
to fasten duties and responsibilities upon 
the head of the State that are now exercised 
by a body of persons subject to popular 



DUTIES OF THE HEAD OF THE STATE 19 

control. Under such circumstances, excep- 
tion might be taken to the hereditary em- 
ployment of such expanded powers. There 
is, however, another method of strengthening 
the execution while retaining the advantages 
of the hereditary principle. Even as matters 
stand to-day the Executive in Great Britain 
has been greatly strengthened. It was 
an inevitable outcome of the war. The 
present Prime Minister enjoys a freedom of 
action far superior to that of Lord Palnier- 
ston or of Lord Salisbury. A system that 
leaves the head of the State untrammelled 
by popular election, and free to exercise 
popular functions, possessing a moderating 
and unifying influence over a widely extended 
empire, appears better suited to our Imperial 
needs than the system so elaborately con- 
trived by Alexander Hamilton and his 
Federalist colleagues. 

A return to the constitutional practice of 
the pre-war period is unlikely. The evolu- 
tion of our system of government has pro- 
ceeded too rapidly and too far. Imperial 
and Commonwealth needs have put a heavy 
strain upon the ancient forms of parliamen- 
5 



20 THE CROWN 

tary rule at Westminster. The " Cabinet ' : 
— the mysterious political growth that sprang 
from the compromises of the eighteenth 
century — has suffered a war- change. The 
Dominions and India are taking a share in 
the direction of British policy that they are 
not likely to relinquish. 

But reflecting minds in the trenches and 
beyond, while noting these changes, and 
while endeavouring to sift political chaff 
from wheat, may hesitate before concluding 
that a republican form of government is 
the last word of democracy. They would do 
wisely to make sure that the elective plan — 
itself a compromise— under which presidents 
are chosen, yields better results than that 
process known as heredity, under which King 
George ascended the throne. The King is 
not a power, but an influence. If the great 
masses of the people throughout the Empire 
will only grasp the importance of this dis- 
tinction, the stability of the monarchy is 
not likelv to be shaken. 



CHAPTER II 

THE CHURCH 

For the majority of fighting soldiers the 
Church of England has no meaning. Her 
history, her services, and her functions are 
outside the range of their knowledge and 
experience. These young men would call 
themselves Christians, but rather from want 
of any other respectable classification than 
from an acceptance of the doctrines and 
conduct that Christianity implies and im- 
poses. For Christianity and the Church, 
so far as they are aware, have no necessary 
cohesion. Of Christian dogma they speak 
often coldly and critically, though rarely with 
disrespect. Of the Church it is otherwise. 

The army chaplains, of all denominations, 
brave, kindly, helpful as they are, have 
passed difficult hours in amicable discussions 
that they themselves have invited. On 

Sunday evenings and on many weekdays 

21 



22 THE CHURCH 

they have encouraged debate and instigated 
free discussion. In hospitals and clearing 
stations they have sat at bedsides receiving 
confidences and giving counsel. If the 
hierarchy will listen to these devoted sons 
of the Church, and if they take action 
in accordance with deductions they cannot 
fail to draw, they may preserve the Church 
of England. They should listen, too, to the 
ministers of the Presbyterian communities 
— above all to the men from the north. 

It is difficult for the inhabitants of cities 
to understand village life. When a country 
lad drifts into a town, he speedily forgets 
his boyhood. Memory is submerged in 
violent contrast. In the country a village 
clusters round the Church, its most con- 
spicuous object. In cities the Church 
is submerged. Street-bred people cannot 
understand the place of the Church in the 
rural life of the country. In their eyes the 
country parson stands for reaction. He is 
a parasite living somnolently in infinite 
contentment. He cares little for education 
that is not doctrinal. He pays low rates 
of wages himself and discourages the idea 



CITIES AND VILLAGES 23 

that they are inadequate. He believes in 
almsgiving as the panacea for poverty. He 
wears broadcloth, but holds fustian to be 
good enough for his parishioners. He 
preaches submission to the will of God, when 
he means the squire. He looks with cold 
disapproval on the public-house 3 but gets 
up bazaars. A local tyrant himself, he 
requires humility from others. Upon the 
village schoolmaster and the recipient of a 
food-ticket alike he imposes the test of 
conformity. 

This is the caricature that passes for 
high verity in the eyes of the townsman 
when he endeavours to argue that the 
Church is responsible for the " degrading 
lethargy " of rural life in England. He 
does not realize the monotony of the English 
village, its quiet, uneventful days slowly 
passing aloof from the great world ; its 
dark long evenings, unenlightened by the 
humours of the cinematograph. The com- 
munal life even of a French village is un- 
known in ours. No gleam from the outer 
world penetrates the hedgerows. Great 
artists in the past, Crabbe, George Eliot, 



24 THE CHURCH 

and Mrs. Gaskell, have painted the picture. 
To-day Hardy and Barrie and Synge have 
sketched in illuminating detail. In these 
small backwaters of humanity is obliged by 
his profession to reside a priest. He is 
there as the guardian of a shrine that for 
centuries has stood unchanged ; only the 
lichen has spread over the face of its stone- 
work. Under the porch is hung a roll of 
names, his predecessors since, perhaps, the 
tenth century of the Christian era. Their 
bones lie under the yew trees. The dogma 
this man preaches from the worn pulpit on 
Sundays has been modified or altered, but 
the gospel is unchanged. He has come, an 
educated, experienced man from the outer 
world, and has brought with him its wider 
significance. He has travelled in Italy and 
Spain. He has talked with poets and poli- 
ticians. He has even read the Quarterly 
Review and seen an aeroplane. A son has 
fought for the Empire in India ; another was 
lost in the Antarctic seas. A daughter has 
returned to the village on a holiday from 
the hospital which she has chosen to make 
her home. The fresh air from the great 



THE PARISH PRIEST 25 

spaces beyond blows through the vicarage 
upon the lintels of these isolated cottages. 
That is one interpretation of the Church's 
work in rural England, altogether apart 
from its spiritual side. 

The clergyman is an educational influence 
of superlative value, although he is not the 
official teacher. His wider knowledge, based 
on experience that his surroundings lack, 
permeates these small communities. He 
supplies for his parish a peripatetic school 
of simple philosophy, cheap certainly, and 
ridiculous sometimes, but invaluable as is 
the village well, whose waters would not pass 
any severe hygienic test. Replace him by 
the teacher, it is argued, and the money 
that he costs will do more to widen the 
horizon of these peasants than his dubious 
personality. 

How easy, and yet how difficult ! For a 
schoolmaster is rarely a teacher, and learn- 
ing is far removed from education. 

To the young Scotsman this reasoning 
appeals feebly. Thanks to the old-fashioned 
dominie, thanks to a century and a half of 
acquired custom, thanks to the value long 



26 THE CHURCH 

ago put upon education in the Scottish 
glens, thanks to the system of bursaries 
for ambitious lads, Scotland is truly, as her 
sons maintain, sixty years ahead of rural 
England. There is no comparison even now, 
under model Boards of Education, spending 
freely upon their scholastic system, between 
the average Scottish and English school- 
master. 

It is not a matter of educational tests, but 
of upbringing, of social gifts, of aptitudes, 
and of intellectual atmosphere. It would 
take a generation or two to produce the 
like in England. Destroy the Established 
Church, abolish the parish priest, substi- 
tute for him the only type of schoolmaster 
of which there is any supply available, and 
every English village becomes intellectually 
derelict for a time. 

This reasoning may impress the men who 
criticize and are ready to destroy the posi- 
tion held by the village clergy. It will not 
convince them. The picture engraved upon 
their minds of the idle, ultra-Tory, patron- 
izing, archaic vicar has cut too deep. It 
may, however, lead them to pause. Upon 



INFLUENCE OF THE PARSON 27 

these matters women will have much to say, 
and women have hitherto been loyal to the 
Church. 

In cities and larger towns its position is 
both stronger and weaker. The vicar of an 
urban parish is a less conspicuous figure. 
He excites no jealousy, and criticism passes 
him by in the crowd. His stipend is un- 
coveted by town folk and his activities un- 
noticed. The vicarage is a street number. 
He shares with the rate-collector, the district 
visitor, and the sanitary inspector the honour 
of calling on the poor. Battling against 
heavy odds, he fights a clean way for the 
Cross through grimy streets. The obsequious 
smile of the postulant, and the smug gravity 
of his churchwardens, leave his reason clear 
and his heart unscarred. He is the army 
chaplain of the Church Militant, the type 
of padre with whom the young men, fresh 
from the trenches, love to wrestle in argu- 
ment. In Flanders they will talk with him 
by the hour ; but in Bermondsey they will 
greet him with a nod. He possesses none of 
the attributes of the tyrant, and does not 
strike his neighbours as reactionary or 
6 



28 THE CHURCH 

archaic. But they " have no use for him," 
and the cinema is next-door and the music 
hall over the way. The Evening News can 
be got at every street corner, and there are 
cheap trains to and fro on Sunday. 

The young men and women who will 
shortly have a predominant influence over 
the future of Great Britain are untrained in 
the art of government, and quite inexperi- 
enced beyond a contracted orbit. Social 
problems are compared by them with their 
obvious momentary needs. They cannot 
tell whether a tree grows from its root or 
its top. Like children, their desires are 
clear to themselves, but they can trace no 
relation between the fulfilment of them and 
the social organism that renders their fulfil- 
ment possible. 

If older men are blind, if they misunder- 
stand the portents, then the resistless stream 
of young men returning from the war, and 
of young women overflowing the channels of 
employment, will be certain to sweep away 
every obstacle that appears to stand between 
them and their ambitions and their enjoy- 
ment of life. 



IMMANENT CHANGE 29 

Some years ago the Scottish Churches 
recognized the danger. They are drawing 
close together and seeking " unity of com- 
mand." Scepticism and indifference had 
led to a marked change in the attitude of 
the Scottish people towards the Church of 
their fathers. The authority of the minister 
had for some time been on the wane. The 
number of communicants had dwindled. The 
sacred character of the Sabbath was violated ; 
cheap newspapers and cheap science were 
doing their work. In the face of peril the 
old schisms are likely to be healed in Scot- 
land. It is an example and a warning to 
those who cherish the Church of England, 
not for its spiritual mission only, but as an 
organic feature of the institutions of our 
country. 

To direct the revenues of the Church to 
education, to turn cathedrals into national 
museums, and churches into school-halls, 
are proposals sufficiently plausible to attract 
the superficial glance of a new and in- 
experienced electorate. The clergy of 
all denominations in England should take 
heed. Lincoln and York, Canterbury and 



30 THE CHURCH 

Gloucester, are not only provincial and 
diocesan centres. They are the pinnacles of 
a great edifice that stands for the material 
well-being of a large section of the people, as 
well as for the spiritual life of England. 

When Henry Warden undermined the 
faith of the vassals of the Halidome, it was 
not long before the great Abbey of Kenna- 
qhair became the appanage of a greedy Scot- 
tish noble. It was impossible in the six- 
teenth century to convince the Roman 
prelates of their danger. The hold of the 
Catholic Church upon the people had 
been so long established. The hierarchy 
was powerful and wealthy. Its adherents 
were men and women of the highest rank. 
In spite of a display of courage and un- 
daunted tenacity, Catholicism was spoliated 
and destroyed by the determined attack of 
a few enthusiastic preachers. Knox, power- 
ful as he was, proved powerless to save the 
Church revenues and buildings for the 
scheme of education that he favoured, and 
incidentally preserve them for the aesthetic 
benefit of Scotland. The Catholic clergy 
would not listen to compromise, and mis- 



THE REFORMATION 31 

judged the strength of their detractors. The 
lesson should not be thrown away. 

To a Catholic of the sixteenth century the 
Reformation appeared to be the negation 
of all spiritual life, and of Christianity itself. 
Destruction of the quiet, monastic life, 
whatever element of truth there may have 
been in its abuses, seemed to the Catholic 
an act of sacrilege. That the monks might 
yield some of their privileges and their super- 
fluous wealth to the hard-pressed laity was 
to desecrate the house of God. No accom- 
modation was possible. Consequently the 
clash of competing interests led to results 
that benefited nobody. The waste of wealth 
was only equalled by the loss of opportunity. 
Scotland lost splendid monuments of Gothic 
art, and a great chance was missed of apply- 
ing wealth, learning, and individual work 
to the moral, intellectual, and material 
benefit of her people. The Roman Catholic 
Church lost everything. 

The storm gathered slowly and spread 
gradually over the face of the land, but it 
was only by degrees that the devastation 
became apparent. 



82 THE CHURCH 

The men and women who, to-day, mis- 
conceive the uses of the clergy, undervalue 
their labours, dislike their influence, and 
scoff at their transcendental beliefs, may 
succeed in bringing about one of two results. 
They may provoke an act of pure destruc- 
tion, and leave their country, themselves, 
and their children's children the poorer by 
the loss of so much that is beautiful, healthy, 
and inspiring. Or they may, calmly and 
without passion, prevail upon the clergy 
to come into line with the spiritual require- 
ments of the modern world. 

In order to succeed in this they would 
have to convince the clergy that the Church 
exists for the sake of the masses, and that 
the masses are the best judges of their own 
requirements. This would be a difficult 
but constructive act, and in the spirit of 
sound reformation. 

Meantime the clergy, if they are wise, will 
meet these young people half-way, and will 
conform their mode of life to the demands 
of men and women who have been born 
again in the course of the war. If the people 
insist that their spiritual pastors should be 



OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE CLERGY 33 

lay teachers as well, the clergy would be 
wise to submit. Many prejudices would 
have to be abandoned ; life would be harder 
in many cases ; habits would have to be 
changed and sacrifices incurred. But funda- 
mental truths would remain in the custody 
of the Church. 

The experiences of the war have demon- 
strated beyond all question the virtues of 
individual English men and women. It has 
been as though a race had risen from the 
dead. Courage, endurance, soberness, obedi- 
ence, sacrifice ! If from inability to under- 
stand the moral dilemma resulting from a 
war that has made such demands upon the 
religious beliefs of the people, the clergy 
cling to old-established habits, to anti- 
quarianism, formalism, and euphemism, they 
will lose the best chance the Church of Eng- 
land has ever had, and maybe the last. 

Dogmatic theology makes no appeal to 
youths and maidens hard pressed by the 
hurry of the modern world. Time is wasted 
in preaching the Word to the unconverted, 
in old lovable and simple fashion. Scepti- 
cism and indifference towards transcendental 



34 THE CHURCH 

things never yield to argument. Against the 
mind that denies or doubts the presence of 
God no reasoning prevails. It is sufficient 
to remember, 

" That almost everyone, when age, 

Disease, or sorrows strike him, 

Inclines to think there is a God, 

Or something very like Him." 

But the value to the nation of a corporate 
effort, such as the Church of England, in- 
stinct with a sense of national life, can make 
if it pleases, is great enough to justify its 
maintenance by an electorate, however care- 
less of spiritual things, however cold to the 
higher aspects of religion, and sceptical of 
its truths. 

If the clergy — and the experience of the 
war shows that they can do so — are ready 
to sacrifice ease, to subdue controversy, and 
suppress retort ; if they are prepared to 
change their habits, modify their practice, 
and transmute their functions, they will 
suffer no moral loss, and they will give the 
Church in England and Scotland a stronger 
hold over the soul of the nation than she has 
ever yet established. 



CHAPTER III 

THE CABINET 

The Cabinet has been called a Board of 
Control chosen by the Legislature. This 
description is inaccurate. The Cabinet in 
its origin was a secret committee of the Privy 
Council, chosen by the sovereign. It was 
a growth — some considered it an excrescence 
— on the dual system of government under 
which the sovereign selected his ministers, 
but with the consent of the House of 
Commons. 

The Privy Council has now ceased to be 
an operative part of the Constitution, and 
has become a mere list of persons whose 
party services receive a titular reward mid- 
way between the Peerage and a baronetcy. 
The Cabinet is no longer selected by the 
sovereign, but by the Prime Minister of the 
day, whose tenure of office depends upon 

7 35 



36 THE CABINET 

his command of a majority in the House of 
Commons. 

Importance has been attached by theorists 
to the fusion of executive with legislative 
power. The evolution of the Cabinet 
authority was assumed to ensure this con- 
stitutional result, and did so, with more or 
less success, up to the outbreak of the war 
in 1914. Then came a rapid change. Cabinets 
in the eighteenth century were small, but 
their tendency was to expand. William III 
and Queen Anne presided over a Cabinet 
composed of six or seven ministers. The 
early Hanoverian kings, unable to speak 
English, ceased to preside at the Cabinet, 
and abandoned this function to the First 
Minister. The secrecy of Cabinet discussion 
was always rigidly maintained. Even the 
normal meetings of "His Majesty's confi- 
dential servants " were unrecorded until the 
institution was over a century old. No 
secretary was ever present, and no minutes 
of the Cabinet proceedings were kept. Only on 
rare occasions a document called a " minute 
of the Cabinet " was formulated, and the 
names of the ministers approving or dis- 



CABINET DEVELOPMENT 37 

approving were placed upon record in the 
archives of the sovereign. 

The Prime Minister was in the habit of 
writing to the sovereign after Cabinet 
meetings a short precis of its decisions 
in the form of a confidential letter; but 
the literary gifts and caligraphy of Prime 
Ministers varied, and these documents 
hardly constitute an accurate record, nor 
were they at any time used for purposes of 
reference. 

The Cabinet Council was unrecognized as 
an integral part of the Constitution, and the 
term Prime Minister was no more than a 
complimentary expression, until Mr. Balfour 
obtained for his successors, though not for 
himself, its official recognition. 

During the twenty years previous to the 
war, the powers and influence of the Cabinet 
Council had waned. This loss of power as 
well as prestige was due to two causes— 
the numerical increase of its members and 
the growth of the ascendancy of the Prime 
Minister. The size of the Cabinet led to the 
informal practice of an inner Cabinet or ring 
of the most influential ministers. 



88 THE CABINET 

In Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet of 1880 im- 
portant questions were discussed and decided 
by a small group within the Cabinet, which 
merely registered their decrees often after 
action had been taken. This practice be- 
came normal as time rolled on. It contained 
the germ of the plan now in force under 
Mr. Lloyd George. Necessarily the Cabinet 
Council, though still retaining its place in 
the public eye, suffered a diminution of 
authority. 

The Prime Minister, meanwhile, was ceasing 
to be a minister primus inter pares, and was 
becoming vested with sole executive author- 
ity, relying upon the support, accorded to 
him personally, of the House of Commons, 
rather than upon the collective responsibility 
of the Cabinet. Mr. Gladstone was erroneously 
credited with having established complete 
supremacy over his colleagues, and was 
accused of exercising over them dictatorial 
authority. But Mr. Balfour certainly did ; 
and his and Sir Henry Campbell Banner man's 
decisions were unquestioned by their col- 
leagues. Perhaps the final evolution of 
the Prime Minister from the chrysalis stage 



POWER OF PRIME MINISTER 39 

occurred when Lord Salisbury survived his 
dismissal of Lord Randolph Churchill. 

When forming one of his later adminis- 
trations, Mr. Gladstone said that the nexf 
most serious step to taking a colleague into 
the Cabinet was leaving out a colleague who 
had once been admitted. He meant by this 
to draw attention to the gravity of cheapen- 
ing Cabinet office, and of lowering the 
prestige of the Cabinet as the supreme 
executive organ of the nation's will. Events 
have achieved what he would have looked 
upon as a deplorable tendency in our system 
of government. The fact that there are 
three ex-Premiers living to-day, and a 
countless horde of ministers and ex-ministers 
floating about the parliamentary lobbies, has 
depreciated the credit of official life in public 
estimation. Outside a comparatively small 
body of parliamentary reporters, there is not 
a man alive who could tell off Mr. Asquith's 
Cabinet of twenty-three without a mistake. 
Yet there are still numerous readers of politi- 
cal history who are perfectly familiar with 
every figure of the Grenville ministry or 
Sir Robert Peel's Cabinet of 1841. 



40 THE CABINET 

If the Cabinet, as a collective instrument 
of government, carries insufficient moral 
weight, its day is over, for as a piece of 
executive mechanism it is completely out of 
date. During the past thirty years those 
who have had chances of watching the inner 
working of the constitutional machine would 
agree that a Cabinet of poor quality is 
generally the more efficient instrument of 
government, provided that the Prime 
Minister possesses character and decision. 
The Cabinet of 1880, crammed with nota- 
bilities, containing men of high capacity, 
eloquent, and enjoying popular influence, 
was the weakest Cabinet of recent times, 
and that of Sir Henry Campbell Banner man 
was the strongest. 

A Cabinet works well or ill according as it 
is loyal to its chief, and if its members are 
in agreement upon broad and simple political 
issues. Disloyalty between colleagues and 
a conflict of principles among its members 
are fatal to Cabinet efficiency. 

As politics, therefore, become more com- 
plex, as political sects become more 
numerous, as personal ties become slacker 



EFFICIENT AND INEFFICIENT CABINETS 41 

and personal rivalries more acute, efficient 

government by means of such a committee, 

collectively responsible for secret decisions, 

becomes more difficult. Under the pressure 

of the war it has become impossible. Is there 

any good reason to think that this is a 

passing phase, and that when peace comes 

the old traditional customs of parliamentary 

rule under the control of a Cabinet Council 

can be resumed with advantage to the State ? 

The population of the United Kingdom 

has quadrupled since the reign of George III. 

The Empire has grown out of all recognition. 

The business dealing with the affairs of Great 

Britain and of the Empire, transacted daily, 

has been proved by the experience of the war 

to require a change of method, as well as a 

large expansion of officials. The method 

was changed when Mr. Lloyd George became 

Prime Minister. It was his first ministerial 

act. 

Before the war the administration of their 
departments had occupied the whole time 
of the departmental ministers, of which the 
Cabinet was mainly composed. They had 
no leisure to consider questions of grave 



42 THE CABINET 

import that arose from day to day in spheres 
of vital interest to the nation, but which 
were not classified under departmental 
headings. This duty fell to the Prime 
Minister. He possessed no departmental 
staff, and no " office," other than a few 
private secretaries. He worked on a system 
inherited from Sir Robert Walpole, and his 
work overwhelmed him. It was not per- 
formed. Some years prior to the war he 
had been furnished with a secretariat for the 
purpose of co-ordinating the previsional 
efforts of the Admiralty and the War Office. 
This was called the Committee of Imperial 
Defence. Fortunate in its personnel, the 
Secretariat of the Committee of Imperial 
Defence had made preparation for the out- 
break of war. Its remarkable and patriotic 
secretary foresaw the necessity of stretching 
out a hand beyond the departments with 
which he was specially concerned. Sir 
Maurice Hankey induced successive Prime 
Ministers to realize that modern war was 
a matter in which every State department 
was concerned. By means of sub-committees 
of the Committee of Imperial Defence, 



THE PRIME MINISTER 43 

almost every problem that was bound to 
arise if war broke out received some con- 
sideration. A " War Book " was prepared, 
and its value will be appreciated when the 
whole history of the war is laid bare. 

In August 1914 Mr. Asquith at once took 
possession of the secretariat of the Committee 
of Imperial Defence. The evolution of this 
secretariat into a secretariat for the Cabinet 
was natural and inevitable. As the war 
progressed a further evolution became conse- 
quential and necessary. The War Cabinet 
was formed and its secretariat was strength- 
ened. Mr. Lloyd George roughly divided 
departmental administration from the duties 
of considering, and settling, the larger 
problems raised by the daily management 
of the business of the war. The system 
is still imperfect, and requires constant re- 
vision. The question for the nation is 
whether the new system, improved as it can 
be, shall be applied to the government of 
the country when the war ceases. 

For years to come the storm- swell of the 
war will continue to break upon the shore of 
our country's domestic wants. A " Peace 
8 



44 THE CABINET 

Book " will prove to be as grave a necessity 
as was the " War Book." No one supposes 
that it will be possible to abandon the 
system of separating administration from 
the business of the Supreme Executive, until 
a considerable time has elapsed. War con- 
ditions are bound to have their aftermath. 
Emergence from them will take time, and 
the work of a Peace Cabinet will absorb as 
much energy as is bestowed to-day upon the 
business of the war. The sessions of the 
War Cabinet are practically permanent. 
The old summons to " His Majesty's con- 
fidential servants " has become a memory. 
The War Cabinet is in constant session, and 
possesses a number of most capable secre- 
taries. Its work is simplified by agenda 
tables, by preparatory memoranda, and its 
discussions, as well as its decisions, are placed 
on record under the supervision of one of the 
very ablest of public servants. There is no 
resemblance between the secret conclaves of 
the Cabinet Council of previous governments, 
and the meetings of Mr. Lloyd George's War 
Cabinet. 

No one with knowledge and experience of 



THE WAR CABINET 45 

the conduct of business before the war and 
at the present time, is under any illusion as 
to the possibility of again returning to 
the older plan. Publicists who know little 
of the inner working of the Cabinet system, 
except from hearsay, clamour for its revival. 
Professional politicians, for diverse reasons 
connected with party motive or personal 
ambition, follow suit. But with all its im- 
perfections the as yet unsystematized system 
is better suited to the requirements of the 
Empire, than the old Cabinet Council which 
had become obsolete before the war. 

The new plan possesses another advantage. 
It is adaptable to the aspirations of the 
Dominions to take part in Imperial delibera- 
tions, and to exercise influence over Imperial 
decisions. These aspirations have been in- 
dulged, and cannot remain unfulfilled. The 
new Cabinet system has been evolved upon 
lines well known in the practice of the science 
of government, as Englishmen have for 
generations understood that science. It was 
born under circumstances of national neces- 
sity; and though modifications and improve- 
ments follow quickly as fresh necessities 



46 THE CABINET 

arise, the principle of a small executive 
Cabinet Council, free from the onerous duties 
of administration, is certain to remain the 
keystone of the arch of government when 
peace comes. 

That the question will be fully debated 
before the tribunal of public opinion is 
certain. Attempts will be made to confuse 
it with the plan adopted of appointing con- 
trollers of all kinds, with their vast horde 
of bureaucratic employees. This plan is a 
compromise with the exigencies of such a 
war as this, and does not possess the element 
of permanency. If the new electorate insist 
upon hearing reasoned arguments, and 
require to see and to examine statements of 
fact, as to the comparative working of the 
two Cabinet systems, both before and during 
the war, there is little doubt of the issue. 
The first step should be the circulation for 
popular use of the War Cabinet Report for 
the year 1917, compressed into a readable 
form, and sold at the lowest price ; and this 
should be followed by an official estimate, to 
be framed by authority of the War Cabinet 
itself, of the probable rate of reduction of 



FORMS OF GOVERNMENT 47 

the volume of business devolving upon the 
Executive Government, over a series of years 
at the expiration of the war. With this 
information before them the people can be 
trusted to exercise a sound judgment and 
to decide upon a sound policy. 

No rhetorical device should be permitted 
to obscure a simple business proposition. 
The various functions of government, both 
legislative and executive, can be readily 
understood by plain men. There is no 
mystery about them, though the pro- 
fessional politician dearly loves the people 
to think so. 

To rule by oligarchic methods is an art. 
The greater the artist and the more complete 
his powers of mystification, the simpler his 
task becomes and the better the people are 
governed. A democratic form of govern- 
ment should be divorced from art altogether ; 
otherwise it is dishonest. If the people are 
to be consulted, if they are to rule, they must 
know the whole truth in order to exercise a 
free judgment. 

In order to choose wisely between the old 
and the new Cabinet systems, the people of 



48 THE CABINET 

Great Britain and the Dominions should 
insist upon receiving impartial statements 
of their working, and, having obtained them, 
there is very little doubt what the decision 
will be. 



CHAPTER IV 

PARLIAMENT 

Parliament is not the House of Commons. 
This is not a platitude, but a reminder. 
Recent legislation, although it has weakened 
the constitutional powers of the House of 
Lords, has not destroyed its influence. Other 
events and developments may have done so. 
It is too early to judge. Theorists and 
publicists continue to discusss the bicameral 
system. Their views are of minor import- 
ance. The vital issue is whether the great 
mass of the people are not feeling as indiffer- 
ent towards our parliamentary traditions as 
they are towards Church establishment. 
There are indications that a preacher with 
strong convictions, with a clear hold upon 
a simple plan of applying the principles of 
democracy by a more direct method — 
Rousseau's, for example — would have little 

49 



50 PARLIAMENT 

difficulty in overturning parliamentary 
government based upon representation. 

" America," the working men of the north 
are fond of saying, " has not come into this 
war for nothing." They then proceed to 
use arguments, familiar enough, in favour 
of separating legislative from executive 
functions, advocating a wide delegation of 
legislative authority to sections of the United 
Kingdom, where different habits, ideas, and 
requirements prevail, coupled with an exe- 
cutive chosen by popular vote for a definite 
period. 

The points were put to the writer by an 
intelligent artisan, who is working for the 
State at a low rate of wage, and hears these 
matters constantly discussed. 

" We do not mean to let Somersetshire 
control the requirements of Fife. The people 
in the south are sixty years behind us. We 
have no time to look after their interests, 
but we do not mean them to regulate ours. 
Before the war we were left behind by the 
Germans in education and commerce. In- 
formation vital to us could only be obtained 
in Potsdam. The cause of this was a defec- 



POPULAR OPINION IN TRAVAIL 51 

tive parliamentary system, under which 
legislative and executive functions were 
muddled up. The Americans manage better. 
So do the Swiss. We must alter our system. 
Great Britain's external business we should 
be willing to trust to a Prime Minister elected 
for four years, provided that no secret 
arrangements were valid, that diplomacy 
was abolished, that war could not be de- 
clared or treaties made without an appeal 
to popular vote." 

This summary of the views of a man, 
given as they were in considerable detail, 
showing that full discussion takes place 
among the working classes upon these sub- 
jects, contains nothing very new, except its 
menace. It is folly to ignore the fact that 
popular opinion is in travail, and that the 
new electorate, men and women, is unlikely 
to listen to old advocates of old measures, 
but is determined only to listen to protag- 
onists who have new measures to offer. 

An octogenarian House of Commons is 

ignored by the masses of the people. Its 

debates are not reported by the papers they 

read. Its members are hardly known to 

9 



52 PARLIAMENT 

them by name. There is not a member of 
the House of Commons, save one, who com- 
mands the public attention enjoyed by the 
anonymous leader-writers of the Daily Mail. 
No local member of Parliament can compete 
in influence with the editors of great local 
newspapers like the Glasgow Herald. The 
present Prime Minister's speeches are read 
because they are reported and because they 
are referred to in leading articles. No minor 
luminary is heard beyond the four walls 
within which he speaks. 

The Press has usurped the functions of 
Parliament as they were performed in the 
nineteenth century. It controls the Execu- 
tive, and makes and unmakes ministries. 
Parliament, parliamentary tradition, to- 
gether with statesmanship as a school of 
politics, have lost their hold on the faith of 
the nation. Mr. Henderson is reported to 
have said at Nottingham, that he had been 
brought up to believe government to be a 
difficult art, for which special training and 
special education were requisite. Experi- 
ence of office had disabused the Labour 
Party leaders of this delusion. Cabinet 



MR. HENDERSON'S VIEWS 53 

Councils, shrouded in mystery, were mere 
mumbo-jumbo, and two or three adminis- 
trations could be formed out of Labour men 
who would govern the country no worse, 
and perhaps better, than the present Govern- 
ment. 

Mr. Henderson's judgment may be faulty. 
That is not of much importance. The 
gravity of his remark lies in its wide- 
spread acceptance by his hearers. It could 
not be otherwise. One statesman after 
another has been subjected to the bitterest 
criticism in the Press. Politicians have been 
ridiculed and reviled, individually and in 
groups. Refutation has proved to be im- 
possible, as the critics hold every dominat- 
ing position. The Press wins its way by 
attack, and by the possession of the initia- 
tive. Explanations by the men attacked 
are treated as excuses. Their reputation is 
sullied and their influence undermined. By 
this process the man himself, and the 
institution of which he forms an integral 
part, are deprived of the authority that they 
are elected to exercise. No underpinning 
of the parliamentary fabric appears to be 



54 PARLIAMENT 

possible. The evil has progressed too far. 
The superstructure requires to be lightened, 
and new additions erected upon solid foun- 
dations, as much in harmony with an ancient 
building as circumstances will permit. 

The separation of legislative from execu- 
tive functions ; delegation of legislative 
powers by the nation to provincial assem- 
blies ; a federal parliamentary body for 
financial control ; a judicial check upon im- 
perfect legislation ; a " referendum " to the 
nation upon certain reserved matters of 
national importance ; an executive chosen 
by direct election every four or five years ; an 
annual deliberative Imperial Conference, — 
these are the projects that are under discus- 
sion both in rear of the British armies in the 
field, and in the workshops of the north. 
This fact cannot be ignored. 

The widened political outlook of men who 
have for months been living in foreign coun- 
tries, and absorbing new impressions, inclines 
them to examine and discuss conventionali- 
ties and institutions. These men have dis- 
covered new standards of comparison and 
fresh ideals. Men to whom the specula- 



ARGUMENT AND AUTHORITY 55 

tions of Rousseau and Kant are unknown 
have unconsciously felt the impact of their 
buried memories. The mature wisdom of 
Henry Maine, of Fitzjames Stephen, of Henry 
Sidgwick, and of John Morley, will have to 
be disinterred from dusty bookshelves and 
formulated anew for a generation that has 
profited by the Education Acts of forty years 
ago. Ideas are novel to these men and 
women that appear dry as dust to a scholar 
of Balliol. 

But there are two circumstances that 
cannot be overlooked by the contemptuous 
oligarch, and the opportunist politician. 
These men and women do not bow to 
authority in matters of opinion. They 
require reasoned argument, and are not 
content with unsupported statement. And 
they have been constituted by the laws of 
their country the final Court of Appeal. 
The form of government called democracy has 
yielded into their untrained hands a dominant 
voice in the settlement of the institutions 
under which they are to live. 

They realize that representative demo- 
cracy is not the only form democracy can 



56 PARLIAMENT 

take. They see that representative demo- 
cracy, as hitherto understood in Great 
Britain, is not the only method by which 
popular control can be exercised. The ex- 
ample of America, where the principle of 
democracy is interwoven with the oligarchic 
system that was believed to prevail in Eng- 
land under George III, does not stand alone 
in contrast to the democratic Constitution of 
Great Britain. 

For in Great Britain itself and in France 
the principles of popular representation have 
been abrogated for four years. No French- 
man can be found to pretend that the French 
Chamber represents France, any more than 
anyone in England maintains that the 
House of Commons represents the people of 
Great Britain. Both these bodies are mere 
mass meetings of persons who have arrogated 
to themselves, by resolutions prolonging 
their self- ordained privileges, the power to 
sit and discuss measures, that have been 
placed before them by officials, under the 
authority of Mr. Lloyd George in England 
and M. Clemenceau in France. The demo- 
cratic dictatorship of these statesmen has 



EMERGENCY MEASURES 57 

been confirmed, not by free assemblies repre- 
senting the people, but by the assent of the 
people themselves, given informally and 
passively, and registered by the Press as 
the vocal organ of popular opinion for the 
purpose. 

This abnormal delegation of supreme 
executive authority to one man, who is free 
to select his instruments of government, 
was not a deliberate act, but an evolution 
of democratic rule under the pressure of the 
war. After this fashion precedent after pre- 
cedent has been created in our past history, 
as emergencies have arisen, from the days 
of Simon de Montfort to those of Mr. Lloyd 
George. 

But emergency measures have a curious 
way of becoming static. The assent to Acts 
of Parliament is given in Norman-French 
to-day, because it was the language of the 
Plantagenet baronage ; and a Prime Minis- 
ter is evolved to preside over Cabinet 
Councils because a Hanoverian sovereign 
was unable to speak English and had to be 
addressed by Sir Robert Walpole in Latin. 
The party system, believed by many to be 



58 PARLIAMENT 

an emanation of high statesmanship and 
often defended as such, was in England a 
Jacobite incident, and in the United States 
a relic of slavery. In democratic France it 
does not exist, yet the French democratic 
form of government has stood the war test 
as well as ours or the American. 

The Constitution of the United Kingdom 
has undergone a process of change that may 
prove to be permanent. On the other hand, 
it may be that the old school of parlia- 
mentarians will manage to push the State 
coach back into the old ruts. That they will 
endeavour to do so is already apparent. But 
it is equally clear that an effort will be made, 
probably under the leadership of Mr. Lloyd 
George, to graft permanently upon our 
institutions the governmental practice that 
has prevailed during his premiership, shorn 
of attributes that belong to a period of war 
and are unnecessary in normal times, but 
retaining the principle of severance between 
executive authority and responsibility to a 
legislative assembly. His success or failure 
will largely depend upon the international 
outcome of the war, upon whether an appeal 



A CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGE 59 

to the electorate takes place before the war 
ends and the response he gets, upon the secret 
conferences with the dominion representa- 
tives, and largely upon the Irish settlement, 
if that haven can be reached before peace 
comes. 

It will depend finally upon the impression 
left on the mind of the masses, with whom a 
decision now rests, by Mr. Lloyd George's 
success or failure to achieve fulfilment of 
the task he undertook. Parliament has had 
little to do with the conduct of the war, 
beyond registering the decrees of the Prime 
Minister. Criticism, except of a perfunctory 
kind, has been silenced. The Prime Minister 
has looked for support to the newspaper 
Press and not to the House of Commons. 
The only effective control exercised over the 
action of ministers has been by the Press, and 
not by the House of Commons. 

Although the basis of legislative power has 
been widened by an immense increase of the 
electorate, a check has been imposed simul- 
taneously upon the interference of the Legis- 
lative with the Executive Government. 

A constitutional change that may prove 
10 



60 PARLIAMENT 

to be permanent has been brought about by 
a combine between the Prime Minister of the 
day, and organs of public opinion other than 
the elected representatives of the people. 

This novel factor cannot be ignored. The 
inarticulate masses do not become articulate 
by the mere process of putting a cross against 
the name of a parliamentary candidate, 
although the delusion that they do has been 
carefully fostered. An anonymous writer of 
leading articles, with an eye to the sale of his 
paper, is just as likely to represent faithfully 
public opinion as a Member of Parliament 
elected by a bare majority. 

Upon this hypothesis the government of 
Mr. Lloyd George is founded. 

Upon this hypothesis he has challenged 
the enemies of this country to give or receive 
the " knock-out blow." 

In the success of the Allies, Parliament will 
have played a very subordinate part, and 
its powers and future influence cannot fail 
to be permanently affected by its impotence 
in one of the greatest crises in our history. 



CHAPTER V 

THE WAR AIM 

The Destruction of Militarism, a League of 
Nations, the Limitation of Armaments, are 
fine phrases. Treated rhetorically, they stir 
deep emotions. But the Allies have not, so 
far, agreed upon their interpretation or 
definition. 

Territorial readjustment, on the other 
hand, is to-day, as it always has been, an 
indispensable attribute of a treaty of peace 
following upon complete victory. 

President Wilson has shown in his numer- 
ous allocutions a consciousness of this 
primordial difficulty. 

The great wars of the sixteenth and seven- 
teenth centuries are so well known, that a 
schoolboy could run off lists of battles lost 
and won, while the names of the statesmen 
who provoked and of the generals who 
fought them are household words. But 

61 



62 THE WAR AIM 

few memories retain the list of peace treaties 
signed during that period, and still less their 
provisions. When examined, these peace 
treaties are almost invariably based on the 
conviction of their protagonists that peace 
was definitely assured, and in nearly every 
case intelligent publicists and deluded peoples 
believed that the latest treaty was about to 
herald an era of indefinite peace. But in no 
case did these peace treaties fulfil the hopes 
of their framers. 

It is a chastening of the spirit to find that 
the statesmen and diplomatists who signed 
the numerous peace treaties scattered over 
two centuries, from the Peace of Westphalia 
to the revolutionary year of 1848, in nearly 
every case believed that they were ensuring 
the pacification of Europe. Nations shared 
the political delusions of their rulers. The 
more drastic the changes in the European 
map, the more assured were the map-makers 
of the permanent character of their work. 
There is a pathetic ring about the speeches 
of English ministers, and the popular re- 
joicings in England, over the ill-starred 
Treaty of Amiens. 



THE LEAGUE OF PEACE 63 

In no case was the deception more com- 
plete than in the readjustment of 1815. The 
Holy Alliance then formed was signed by the 
" All Highests " of the day. They declared 
that they would govern their own peoples 
and deal with neighbouring states by 
" taking as their sole guide the precepts of 
the holy religion of our Saviour, namely, the 
precepts of justice, Christian charity, and 
peace." 

All the European sovereigns became mem- 
bers of the League of Peace except the Pope. 
The " precepts of the Holy Religion of our 
Saviour," as applied by Metternich, their 
interpreter, succeeded in securing an em- 
barrassed pause for a generation, after which 
the civilized world threw off the yoke, and 
plunged once more into an orgy of revolution 
and war, that has continued without inter- 
ruption to the present time. 

President Wilson is too trained a philo- 
sopher not to have misgivings whether 
democracy has so transformed the human 
heart that, after all this bloodshed, after 
these disappointed hopes of a better world, 
after similar experiences renewed again and 



64 THE WAR AIM 

again in all their bitterness, man shall have 
ceased to be the curiously clannish animal, 
idealistic but objective, generous but com- 
bative, inexorably struggling for existence, 
that he has shown himself throughout the 
ages. 

Democracy, however, may prove to be 
more than a composite and indefinite word, 
implying a form of government. Like the 
Cross, it may create a new impulse. This 
is the contention of its votaries. The old, 
semi-pagan churches, round which civilized 
Europe has gathered for centuries, that 
have connived at her blood-thirstiness and 
blessed her sacrifices, may come to be 
annexed by a novel dispensation, borne over 
the ocean from a younger race, bearing a 
name of new significance. 

We are faced by the immediate human 
motives of the warring peoples. Common 
prudence demands of the few who guide the 
many, that they should formulate a re- 
arrangement of our relations, both to our 
friends and enemies. If they are wise, 
British statesmen will not postpone to the 
end of the war the necessary task of survey- 



PRESIDENT WILSON'S IDEAL 65 

ing the possibilities of the future, and they 
cannot confine their aims and ambitions to 
the horizon they scan from the sea-walls of 
the British Empire. 

Throughout history very few statesmen 
have successfully pursued general aims, and 
seized the supreme opportunity ; and if 
Cromwell and William the Silent, Chatham 
and Bismarck, are exceptional names, the 
majority of statesmen seem to have followed 
some indefinite instinct, or to have impro- 
vised as opportunity arose, and thus, from 
want of preparation, have found themselves 
forced to barter away the fruits of victory. 

It must be assumed that President Wilson 
and those who follow him will have tested 
their grand inspiration by the lessons of the 
past and the probabilities of to-day. The 
destruction of militarism, the limitation of 
armaments, a league of nations, are not the 
product of a novel idealism ; these ideas 
have floated through Europe from the earliest 
times, and many federal plans based upon 
them have been given a trial. 

For it has been maintained by philosophers 
that federation between states is of all forms 



66 THE WAR AIM 

of government the one that promises to 
provide the strongest and safest securities 
for the liberty and progress of the world. 
Be it so. Is then a League of Nations to be 
taken to mean a super-federation, including 
in some new and as yet undefined constitu- 
tion the already federated states of the 
world, together with countries like France 
and Spain and Italy, whose forms of govern- 
ment are much more centralized than those 
of the greater Powers, and China, Russia, and 
Japan, whose ideals and aspirations are so 
divergent ? 

Such a problem requires cool consideration 
and unbiased judgment. It should not be 
approached with inflamed vision. That 
psychological error lies at the root of Ger- 
many's grievous crimes. She has seen her 
own future and the future of the world 
through a bloodshot haze. The German 
doctrinaires have infected the. homely Ger- 
man people with a virus of false aims, that 
have proved to be their ruin. It required 
a Gothic simplicity of soul to believe that 
Germans, numerous and powerful as they 
are, could succeed in placing Deutschland 



DIFFICULTIES IN THE WAY 67 

iiber Alles. The world is far too big and too 
full. Nor can America, powerful as she is, 
and potentially more powerful, force her 
ideas, however idealistic and pure, alike upon 
civilized and uncivilized mankind. It is a 
method that is totally at variance with the 
fundamental conception of democracy, and 
no grouping of nations that is conceivable 
can impose its volition — call it Kultur or 
anything else — upon an unconvinced, un- 
converted, and unwilling world. 

However admirable, however beneficial, 
however desirable the sentiments of Presi- 
dent Wilson may be, they have first to be 
transformed into political ideas, before there 
can be any reasonable chance of putting 
them into practice. This transformation is 
not a simple matter ; but it is the task that 
lies before the chosen leaders of the Anglo- 
Saxon peoples here and overseas. 

What is the contributory influence of the 
formula, a League of Peace, upon the pros- 
pects of the peace that some day will have 
to be signed ? 

When Mr. Lloyd George was explaining the 
functions of the Versailles Inter- Allied Coun- 
11 



68 THE WAR AIM 

cil to the House of Commons on December 
20th, 1917, he stated that " nations have 
come together to set up a complete machine 
which is a clearing-house, not merely in mili- 
tary matters, but for financial, for economic, 
for shipping, for food purposes, and for all 
things that are essential to the life of the 
nations," and he went on to suggest that 
this Council, organized for the purposes of 
the war, might contain the nucleus of that 
League of Nations to which so many look 
forward, after the war, as a means for estab- 
lishing permanent peace throughout the 
world. This suggestion, and it was nothing 
more, is the furthest point reached as yet by 
European statesmanship towards the realiza- 
tion of President Wilson's hopes. 

If the international craftsmen whose duty 
it will be to compose the differences of the 
belligerent states share Mr. Lloyd George's 
optimism, and if they follow the line of the 
Federalists who were faced with the framing 
of the American Constitution, and if they 
adopt the methods of admirable patience and 
labouring constancy that were character- 
istic of Alexander Hamilton and his col- 



INTER-ALLIED QUESTIONS 69 

leagues, they may, conceivably, dispel the 
hitherto familiar idea, that laws and institu- 
tions are not made, but grow. Approached 
in that temper and with a leaven of faith, a 
hitherto insoluble problem may perhaps be 
solved. If a League of Nations is to be 
formed ad hoc at a Peace Congress, it follows 
that during the concluding period of the 
war, unity of political guidance should supple- 
ment unity of military direction among 
the Allies. 

The regulation of inter-allied questions, 
postal, telegraph and wireless, railways, 
shipping, aerial communications, inter-allied 
economics, finance, commerce and tariffs, 
social problems affecting aliens, education 
and technical development, are all matters 
that may yet be satisfactorily handled under 
some co-operating authority during the pro- 
gress of the war. Add to them a careful 
working out of the far more difficult 
questions of international treaties, and 
an international constabulary; then the 
machinery existing at the conclusion of the 
war, thus supplemented and carefully mani- 
pulated by statesmanship, confident in 



70 THE WAR AIM 

its own instincts, may provide an inter- 
national policy for a still hesitating world. 

The framers of schemes for a new govern- 
ance of Europe are doubtless aware, that 
we have travelled far beyond the mediaeval 
conception, derived from Cicero and through 
Augustine, that individuals and communities 
can only live under a system of rights and 
obligations imposed by the law of natural 
society, based on a principle of mutual non- 
interference. The system, formulated by 
Grotius, which met with general acceptance, 
but never received practical recognition, has 
no living force in Europe to-day. Our 
international morality is the roughest of 
rough compromises. International law has 
never resembled the legal system of rules 
governing civil relations, for the simple 
reason that international law has never in 
reality possessed the sanction of a combina- 
tion of consenting states possessing an organ- 
ized force for the purpose of imposing their 
combined will and decrees. It is essential 
to the plan advocated by the President of 
the United States that this sanction should 
be found, and it can only rest upon an inti- 



ORGANIC AND INORGANIC STATES 71 

mate combination of states directed to this 
end. 

It has never so far been found possible to 
effect a combination between organic and 
what have been called inorganic states — 
between a state like France and a state like 
Austria, or even Great Britain, that rules 
over alien elements " supported by force, 
but divorced in feeling from the rest of the 
population." A League of Nations presup- 
poses the combination of such states, and 
their willingness to accept the decision of a 
Court of Arbitral Justice, that they are bound 
to constitute as their first co-ordinated act. 

History teaches us that wars are five times 
out of ten caused by conflicting fundamental 
principles, religious or political. This being 
so, a state cannot reasonably be expected to 
run any serious risk of a wrong decision, when 
the interests at stake appear to the vast 
majority of citizens to be of the utmost 
gravity. Here we seem to be confronted by 
an insuperable obstacle, unless the moral 
and intellectual nature of the average human 
beings composing the greater communities 
of the world undergoes a radical change. 



72 THE WAR AIM 

Furthermore, it is unlikely that when the 
most important questions are at issue any 
legal precision could be given to their solu- 
tion, even though the litigants were willing 
to accept the judgment of an international 
tribunal. 

To establish the moral hegemony of an 
international authority, that will succeed 
where the Papacy has failed, is the task 
that is about to tax the statesmanship of 
President Wilson and Mr. Lloyd George. 

If President Wilson possesses enough 
vision and will, if Mr. Lloyd George pos- 
sesses enough genius and skill, they may 
succeed. They may find the key to a new 
polity, and they may draw after them the 
sceptical and the disingenuous among their 
colleagues at the Council table. But co- 
operation will be difficult to secure, in view 
of the differences in national character and 
national circumstances among the nations 
and loose federations, of which the Conference 
or Congress is bound to be composed. 

It is the fashion to speak of democracy 
as though it were a creative force, when in 
reality it is nothing more than a form of 



INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 73 

government. And of all forms of govern- 
ment democracy is, perhaps, the noisiest 
and yet the weakest when it comes to execu- 
tive action. 

Let us assume, however, that the tone of 
the Peace Congress will be " democratic," 
but even so the atmosphere of a Peace Con- 
gress cannot be rarefied. It will be heavy 
and thick with political passion. The stan- 
dards of human motive will not be high — 
certainly no higher than they were at 
Vienna in 1814, or at Berlin in 1876. Why 
should they ? The ethics of national politics 
have not changed much since an Athenian 
aristocrat, finding himself outstripped in the 
race for power, turned to the common people 
for support, secured their suffrages, called 
his rule democracy, and kept himself in 
power for forty years. As for the ethics 
of international politics, they have been 
exemplified by the statesmen of the Central 
Powers in their acts, and denounced by the 
statesmen of the Allies in their declarations. 
They reached the lowest depths in August 
1914. 

If an angel of the Lord, a great writer has 



74 THE WAR AIM 

said, were to strike the balance whether the 
world of the Antonines was more intelligent, 
more humane, more civilized, and more 
prosperous then or now, it is doubtful 
whether the decision would favour the 
present. 

We may feel confident that, when this 
question of a League of Nations comes up 
for discussion at a Congress of Peace, the 
sharpest encounter will be between two 
divergent schools of ideas, both of them of 
German origin. On one side of the Council 
table the followers of Kant will urge in 
language that has not been surpassed in 
clearness, that the remedy for war is a 
Federal League of Nations, in which the 
weakest is as strong as the strongest, since 
it relies for protection on the united power 
of all, and the adjudication of their collective 
will. On the other side of the Council table 
will sit men who believe with Bernhardi 
that " war and brave spirit have done more 
great things than love of your neighbour." 

We cannot evade the stern fact that the 
leaders of the Allies, and the allied peoples 
themselves, are not whole-heartedly on one 



STATE EQUALITY 75 

side or the other— that, although President 
Wilson is in ardent agreement with Kant, 
there are others, claiming to be leaders, who, 
in their secret hearts, hold to the view of 
Bernhardi. 

The unequal development of the human 
race is a factor that cannot be overlooked. 
Great communities have been compared to 
great mountains, that have in them the 
primary, secondary, and tertiary strata of 
human progress. Still more aptly does this 
image fit a conference of European states, 
and yet it is difficult to imagine a conference 
or a League of Nations that is not based upon 
the principle of the political equality of the 
several states of which it is composed, if it 
is to fulfil the hopes of the idealist. 

State equality was the fundamental idea 
of the framers of the American Constitution, 
when they allotted two representatives in 
their Senate to every state, irrespective of 
its size, population, or stage of development. 
It was the exact opposite of the principle 
that governed the formation of the German 
Confederation. One has stood the test of 
time ; the other has not. If a League of 
12 



76 THE WAR AIM 

Nations is to stand the strain of national 
sentiment, we should assume the accept- 
ance by Great Britain or Germany of repre- 
sentation in a League of Nations equal to 
that of Switzerland or Portugal. For the 
idealist is bound to hold that the future 
happiness of mankind depends upon the 
abandonment of the usual tests of territorial 
expansion, numbers of population, wealth, 
and even culture, when fixing the rights of 
national representation, since in his view the 
equality of nations is of far greater import- 
ance in the scale of human progress than the 
equality of man. 

These reflections are not captious. They 
are an honest endeavour to point a specific 
moral that must be understood, if any serious 
attempt is to be made to frame a peace on 
the lines advocated by President Wilson. 
The leagued nations will have to become 
familiar with what the Greek historian 
called the co-existence of freedom and self- 
imposed restraint, before they can hope to 
preserve unshaken the fabric they desire to 
raise. 

When, therefore, Mr. Lloyd George speaks 



GOD, PATRIOTISM, PROGRESS 77 

peace to the people, he should pray for divine 
inspiration, for no remembrance of former 
things will help him. He should pray for a 
Pauline conversion of the great peoples of 
the earth, for no scraps of paper will change 
the habits and traditions of ages. The deci- 
mation of the warlike races may help him 
to pacify Europe, as the wholesale slaughter 
of the barons in the Wars of the Roses helped 
Henry VII to pacify England. But just as 
in the fifteenth century many other causes 
were at work, that enabled the Tudor 
sovereigns gradually to impose a new 
authority on their unruly subjects, until the 
soul of England was changed, so parallel or 
subsidiary causes must be sought out and a 
stimulus given to their evolution, if Europe 
and the world are to be pacified when this 
war ends. 

This is a war aim that will justify all the 
sacrifices Great Britain has made, and those 
yet to come. The words God, Patriotism, 
Progress, are often lightly used. Their 
implication varies according to the circum- 
stances of those who use them. Their mean- 
ings are not to be found in a storm of 



78 THE WAR AIM 

conflicting passions. If this war has been 
worth waging, and is worth fighting out to 
the last man, it is because on our side are 
ranged the hopes of those who desire to see 
their fellow-men of all races freed from old 
limitations, not of thought, but of action, 
and to transform social habits and remould 
political institutions, in tune with the dreams 
and aspirations of all that is best in Eng- 
land and America. To ensure such a victory 
over the reactionary spirit of Germany, or 
the forces of reaction nearer home, it is not 
necessary to destroy our national landmarks, 
as the Germans have destroyed Rheims, 
but it is necessary to avoid old pitfalls and 
all weak compromise either with our enemies 
or ourselves. 



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